MWC 2013

This week LG has revealed a new F-Series smartphone line with a software experience similar to the LG Optimus G and G Pro, but coming in with lesser specifications and, in the end, a lower market price. Both of these devices will be bringing 4G LTE connectivity to the international market and, eventually, to the United States as well. If you want to be part of the LG cool club but don't want to toss as much cash down as you'd have to with the G or the G Pro, the Optimus F7 or its smaller sibling, the Optimus F5, may be just what you're looking for.

For those not in the know, the Mobile World Congress 2013 event has been happening over in Barcelona, where GSMA just announced the 18th Annual Global Mobile award winners. This was followed by an honor ceremony hosted by David Walliams, writer, actor, and comedian. Other individuals also made an appearance, including sponsor reps from Telmap, McAfeee, and Myriad.

This week we've gotten to speak with the folks behind the cloud-based personal assistant project known as Indigo, taking the form of an app for both Windows Phone and Android. What we're seeing here is the developers at Artificial Solutions creating a natural language service that you'll not easily get away with speaking about without mentioning Apple's Siri. The biggest difference is in the genes: unlike the iOS-based Siri, Indigo is coming to every platform the developers wish it to - iOS included (though later this year instead of immediately).

It's time to connect to a printer again, this time in a very miniature way with the LG Pocket Photo and the Optimus G Pro for good measure! The LG Pocket Photo is a pocketable printing machine that'll print out tiny 2 by 3-inch photos created with a special process that uses no ink - like magic! The coolest bit about this printer may be the way you connect with it - all you need to do is tap your NFC-laden smartphone to the printer (with the apropriate app open, of course), and your photo will print in right around 30 seconds.

GM's plans to make 4G LTE standard across its range by 2014 is an ambitious one, even more so when you realize it's not just a case of slotting a mobile hotspot into the glove compartment and calling it a day. There's a reason GM chose to announce at a smart mobile-centric show like MWC, infotainment chief Phil Abram told us, rather than at, say, the North American Auto Show or even a more generic tech show like CES. SlashGear sat down in a specially-created concept car to see what GM has in mind for its motorized bubble of connectivity.

Samsung wasn't too keen on us benchmarking the Galaxy Note 8.0 back when it was announced on Sunday, but we couldn't resist stopping by here at Mobile World Congress to run some preliminary tests on the 8-inch Android tablet. The pen-enabled digital notepad runs a 1.6GHz quadcore A9 processor with 2GB of RAM, and so we had high hopes for Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. Sure enough, the iPad mini rival put in a decent showing.

This week we had a chat with Qualcomm's Rob Chandhok about AllJoyn and the future of the company working in the open source universe to make the fully connected future possible - an Internet of Everything. He spoke specifically about small building blocks: connection points and features that have the best chance of ensuring the future is able to continue to connect with each new device of the day as one of the most essential elements in the AllJoyn platform. This approach allows the end user experience on a refrigerator or a washing machine, for example, to work through its whole lifespan - ten year or more, with devices we've not even dreamed of.

This week we've had the opportunity to take a peek at - and play with - LG's brand new Wireless Ultra HD Transmission technology - the world's first! Of course such claims are a always a bit subjective, but from what we've experienced here, they're not kidding around with this technology being mightily impressive. The demonstration came from Mobile World Congress 2013 where LG had an LG Optimus G connected (wirelessly) to a rather high definition LG television, playing a fabulous first-person game to show the instantaneousness of the transfer of information.

Samsung can't help itself, spraying Android over every possible device, and the latest to get the Google treatment is the HomeSync. A media streaming set-top box - though not a Google TV box - the HomeSync is more a way to further integrate Samsung's phones and tablets into your digital life, rather than a standalone gadget in its own right. In fact, your Samsung handset is what controls the whole thing.

Intel's decision to track viewers of its upcoming Web TV service using a camera-equipped set-top-box, tracking living room demographics and better tailoring commercials, left privacy advocates worried, and we've stumbled across a live demo at Mobile World Congress. The proof-of-concept, part of Vodafone's Connected City installation, shows just how the Intel-powered system uses a webcam - mounted above the TV - to identify not only faces but direction of gaze, with real-time statistics that feed into a playlist. Check out a video demo after the cut.

One of the devices that Huawei is showing off at Mobile World Congress 2013 is its little Android-powered set-top box. The device is called the Huawei MediaQ M310 and was first unveiled at CES last month. This set-top box is a small and unobtrusive cube that's only 14 mm thick.

We've been seeing Firefox OS crop up quite a bit lately, reporting yesterday that it will be launched on 18 operators globally. ZTE, Alcatel, Huawei, and LG are all on board for launching handsets with Mozilla's mobile OS, but there's one big maker who's device we won't see it on - Korean manufacturer Samsung.